Misuse of English in the computer literature.....

Question

So recently in the Rails literature the non-word (please, no down grades, I know non-word is a non-word but I'm not publishing this stuff and I don't claim to be more intelligent than those who write books :) P "dasherize" has become somewhat of a de-facto term as in:

"to_xml will default to dasherizing the field names"

Now in every other academic or pseudo-academic field this sort of corruption of the language is not tolerated. Mathematics certainly has its fair share of unique terminology but I haven't come across such bastardizations of the language.

Thoughts?

btw, the above quote could easily and correctly have stated:

to_xml will default to putting dashes in the field names

See how easy that was?

so in a book I just started reading it refers to "hyphenated notation" meaning the same thing as dasherize in the rails community!

Answer 1

The real world is not academia, so if a word is expressive then it will either stick around or be ignored if no one really uses it. New words show up all the time, that's just how it is.

Answer 2

That's what good editors are for.

(Maybe you only see this bastardization in books from certain publishers?)

Answer 3

Neologisms are a part of life and how the language evolves. Some are useful, others less so. In computer programming, we're constantly reinventing the process, it's no surprise that we reinvent the language to describe the process.

That being said, "dasherize" is pretty awful.

Answer 4

Well, keep in mind that once everyone starts using a word, it becomes a word. That's how new words come into being - you think people fifty years ago would have said "email"?

Now, I know nothing about this particular word, so I'm not going to comment on its merits, but if people keep using it and finding it useful, it could become a commonly accepted word. Or it might be forgotten.

Answer 5

There's lots of domain-specific jargon. "Dasherize" happens to be in Rails' lexicon. If you'd decided you would rather call it "dashesquifying," that would deserve a slap.

Answer 6

If "dasherize" sends a chill up your spine, you might want to check out the Jargon File Lexicon:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/lexicon.html

Answer 7

We're computer programmers. We like making up funny words, and acting like nerds. I have no problem with weird words like that.

Answer 8

"dasherize" is a perfectly cromulent word. And I can vouch for the truthiness of it.

Answer 9

I have to agree with you. I'm not a fan of the bastardization of the English language. Maybe I'm just getting old and crotchety but I think if you "publish" something (which could be sending an e-mail, making a comment on Stack Overflow, or writing a blog) then you should use proper language and grammar.

I am daily mortified by otherwise EXTREMELY intelligent people in our professions that can't differentiate 'their', 'there', and 'they're'. There are so many grammar and spelling mistakes in some blogs that I can't concentrate on the content.

Personally, I can't stand "grok". I don't know WHAT it is about that word but it just grates on me every time I hear it. I guess I just don't grok "grok".

My other big one is "disrespect" and "impact". You are NOT "disrespected". You are shown disrespect or someone has disrespect for you. In spite of constant over-use, you are not "impacted" by something. Something has an impact on you.

The bottom line is that people will judge you by your speech. This is in NO way meant as a criticism of people that don't speak English as a native language. From what I've seen - they do MUCH better in my language than I'd EVER do in theirs.

Just my two cents worth.

Answer 10

Your supposition seems to be that no other discipline makes up words to describe concepts. I wonder whether you really know that, or whether it's simply that you don't have much experience reading the literature of other disciplines and so you think the practice is unique to your field.

All fields have jargon. Read a law review. Read some literary criticism. (I read the first page of a friend's biochemistry article, and I accused him of inventing every other word!)

In your particular example, I think dasherize has merit. It's not simply "putting dashes in the field names." It probably involves putting dashes in specific places in the field names according to some set of rules, no? Would you have the text reiterate the rules every time the process is mentioned, just to avoid applying a name?

Answer 11

I'm sure the rails people are anus-peptic, phrasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericombobulations...

Answer 12

You know what I call "Misuse of English in the computer literature"?

Saying depreciated instead of deprecated...

Answer 13

At least this web site has been Ajaxified.

Answer 14

Languages are defined by use, not by dictionaries. Dictionaries merely run after the facts. As long as the receiver of the conversation can understand what the meaning of the word is supposed to be, the word is valid.

On a side note:

I read this book once where almost all of the races and creatures were named with invented words without ever explaining them. It made it so much better because I could make them as awesome as my imagination could come up with (ergo pretty awesome ;)

Answer 15

Now in every other academic or pseudo-academic field this sort of corruption of the language is not tolerated.

As someone with a Masters in English and more than a few publications in literary journals, I call bullshit. For real.

First of all, language is infinitely corruptible by design. It fluctuates and changes all the time. Thinkst thou not so? Then a pox upon thee!

Second, there are a whole lot of dialects of English out there, each one of which corrupts the others to an extent. The inner-city homeboy and the Scottish Highlands goat herder are both speaking English -- an English that is incomprehensible to others, but still English.

The English you apparently suppose is being "corrupted" is what we typically call "Standard Written English." There is an entire cottage industry of grammar nit-pickers who would love to have us believe that English is some pure holy thing, rather than what it is: an unholy marriage between poorly-pronounced French and throat-clanging Saxon. The rules they have foisted upon us are self-contradictory, poorly considered, and often flat-out wrong.

Take for instance the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition. That "rule" dates from the 16th century. The reason for it? Some scholars aspired to make English as noble as Latin. They noticed that the words that make up "preposition" come from the Latin words pre (before) and ponere (to place). Obviously, if it's at the end of the sentence, it's not coming before anything, so it's a mistake.

The only problem with that "rule" is it's not true. People do this all the time. Same with split infinitives -- the only reason people think we shouldn't was because someone back in the day noticed that in Latin you can't split them. But you can in English, and so plenty of people do, including educated people.

Truth is, people make rules like this for reasons that have nothing to do with the language, but everything to do with power. They follow rules like those above because they hope, by doing so, to be perceived as smart and educated. But sub-communities are always creating their own words and reinventing their own grammar.

And I say let them.

Answer 16

A number of answers on this topic have focused on new terminology, good or bad.

But what about new syntax? The foremost example in my view is the verb "to persist". In its age-old acceptation, that verb is intransitive: Something persists.

When I first came across persistence documentation, I couldn't get over the transitive use of the verb: To persist an entity (meaning: to make it persistent). To my shame, I have now grown accustomed to that use, but I persist in the opinion that it is an incredible perversion of the original meaning of the word! Will that usage persist?

(The problem with turning an intransitive verb into a transitive one is that it weakens both versions of the verb. After all, the sentence The cat eats the mouse should never come to mean that the cat is being eaten...)

Answer 17

Actually I have to disagree with you....it is allowed in other disciplines. Cognitively, all languages change over time. The English we speak is different from what our parents speak and what their parents speak and will be different than what our children will speak. New words are added all the time and ones that aren't as popular fall by the way side. (You should watch Erin McKean). The reason why new words aren't added to the dictionary is that the dictionary can only be so big (I mean physically, who wants to own a 2 ton dictionary....well besides me). Not allowing new words to be created is like telling someone they can't evovle a programming language, because the new key word isn't in the current version of it. The thing you have to remember is that changing languages allow them to become more efficent and serve the needs of the people at the time. I am pretty sure that you understood what the person meant by the word "dasherize." You may not have liked it, but it conveyed the necessary though, which is the sole point of language and communication.

Answer 18

the word is "hyphenated"

[this is probably some subtle form of strategery just to get people to talk about it]

Answer 19

Remember the days when Google was not a verb...?

Answer 20

I couldn't agree more. The one that I have seen slipping into general use recently that makes me want to scratch my eyes out is "performant".

Answer 21

The one that annoys me is "allot." Allot is a verb that means to distribute by portions. The words "a lot" mean many. It used to be that people would use "alot," but the spellchecker would catch that, so now they use a word that is so completely wrong that it can cause confusion.

Answer 22

'dasherize' is a method name. 'dasherizing' is coder speak, sorta, refering to the 'dasherize' method.

Answer 23

Sometimes, the crux of the problem is that english is terribly over-verbose and full of redundancies and inefficiencies.

You will come to realise this if you learn, say, Japanese or Russian. With English, you spend an awful lot of time using words that don't add any meaning.

It does and should hurt a programmer to be forced to follow rules for the sake of English correctness at the expense of clarity and brevity.

'Dasherize' is perfectly clear to me. If a word (or pseudo-word) communicates effectively and succinctly, then use it.

A case in point, one answer above complains that "impacted" should be: "something has an impact on you"... If you're programming, do you write 1 word that communicates effectively or concern yourself with 5 that don't add any clarity or meaning whatsoever?